Windmills of my mind

I guess none of us are alien to the “Wow” feeling, one that you get when you bump into something that you had not even dared to imagine. Last Sunday was one of them for me.

Have always wondered why people stick on to one organization for 10+ years. Ages back it used to be the need of having a job/security/unemployment … blah blah!! But in the last decade things around have changed with the ‘boom’ed IT and infrastructure industry. So it is obvious that one must have something more than just money to work long in same organization, one reason I spotted last week was inspiration. Not sure if Alex (my biking mate) agrees this as the reason, works for Total environment (TE) for 13 yrs, who specialize in providing ‘total’ end to end solutions for making high end homes, really mean the word “Home”

Alex had been asking us to visit his projects and office, but took me a year to fit that slot into my ‘buggy’ calendar. When was the last time I entered a space in city, which housed a parking lot covered ‘Totally’ with trees? Can only date back to my good old BMS college of engineering, which housed almost a half kilometer of natural covered parking spaces. The moment we saw a football field of striped lawn in front of the small office buildings, realized that we are not in a commonplace. First sensible noticeable thing was that I did not have to sign in or login into a register, saving some paper and inventory cost of maintaining a useless database of all creatures for which the entry restrictions were waived. As we walked past the cubicles where engineers and architects sit, felt like a museum with some scaled models, large blueprints on solid wooden desks. Looked different to my routines with mazes of wires/cables, endless flow charts, geeky scribbles and “bakra” certificates pinned up.

Alex walked us to a house, which was a fully loaded prototype of an apartment being built. These are high end ones cost a few CRs and mostly serve the lifestyles of the CEO community. Perhaps people there are deprived of imagination and thus TE has to take the pain of building up the whole thing in their beautiful office premise. Have to admit it does not just showcase the features but also deliver a knock out selling punch. May be they hid the legends quoting “ All the accessories displayed are not a part of the standard model”

Alex was quick to point out how TE was different from the whole array of other commercial builders, who are busy planning the next 10 projects when one is being executed. TE was started by a bunch of IIT’ians 15 years back. Like most inventions, our team bumped into this common issue of not having a builder who can give inspired solutions. Like their other IIT mates, they just wanted to solve this problem for the world and converted this into a business case. Some factors made the jaws drop:
- TE handpicks each and every raw material and components that get into their homes. Eg: their elevations are always comprised of high quality hollow red bricks that are handpicked. It gave a naturally rustic look but also zero maintenance for centuries
- Buy their own wood, season them and do all the processing required before they deck up the interiors. Some day they might even start growing their own forests
- Have setup a workshop where all their beams, grills and other metal works are fabricated.
- I have read in PMBOK, that subcontracting is a method used to transfer a project risk to another organization. IIT’ians probably don’t agree with this theory and thus Subcontractors and even each worker on the premise, be it mason, electrician, plumber etc are handpicked and trained.
- 1 year replacement warranty on the ‘product’ the house. Sounds a decent strategy because the CEOs of this generation will rarely stay beyond a year at same home
- They have their own nursery setup which will be used inside the apartments as well as other common areas in apartment complex.
- A 400 man company managing project costs of 1500 crores, reminded me of the history pages describing riches of vijayanagara empire
- I owe the canteens of IT industry some credit for having kept me grounded helping me realize value of home food. Thus the most impressive fact – A kitchen is setup in the office compound where fresh food is cooked. Employees can barge in, help themselves and walk away with a loaded plate to some nice seats below few mango trees

This home was a treat to our eyes, no wonder it costs 4 Crores, but as Alex puts it in his stylish selling accent, it is a functional home and not a home loaded with valuable material. Some details of this 3500 sqft duplex house that did not go unnoticed.
- My eyes are still not sure why it looks palatial to have a 20 feet roof in a living room. Some costs were saved by making one whole wall of the living area to house glass slider doors looking out into the garden with a water body around it. 20ft Long curtains were used and obviously had to be motorized to operate them.
- Centralized vacuum system with one tank to collect the waste. Vacuum slots (or rat holes) were provided in many areas at floor level so that the vacuum pipe can be fit at these slots to vacuum the area or even just push the dirt with your feet into the rat hole. Perhaps would have appreciated a few more such slots to keep the cockroaches and mosquitoes at bay
- Balconies were serene with plants, the water body, the custom made wooden benches and glass flooring
- After walking around for 15 minutes my feet started to appreciate the joint less flooring of Kota stone polished several times after laying them. Somehow they felt this was better and natural than granite at my home, perhaps they are bored of it.
- Had a momentary kick of spotting a defect, when I saw that they had missed to reserve a place for the refrigerator in the kitchen
- Furniture is customized to each customer. Not sure if the Barcelona chairs had to be shipped from Barcelona, atleast sounds a myth not because of shipping overhead, but does Barcelona makes chairs. Its busy with its CBit forums, la liga and tourism for economy, spare time being used for civil unrest/protests activities of catalunya
- In the bed room, a large Aquarium is placed in the common wall between room and the bathroom. Thus one can socialize with your sea world either when relaxing in your bathtub or when lazing on your cot
- Extra mezzanine level beds in kids room to accommodate cousins and friends. Spoils the fun of sharing a bed/bedsheets with them
- How can you use the attic space 6 ft above for daily purposes? A hanger rod fitted into a mechanism which enables it to slide down when a rod is pulled
- My mom would have loved the idea of a wet kitchen in the outdoors to cook her heavy calorie/oily kolbade, chakli and Obattu etc
- Last but not least an application ported on ipad (2 ipads come free with each apartment, a steal offer tempting me), which can control each and every electric system in the house. So you can switch on/off any appliance, dim lights in area of the house, close-open curtains and doors, operate the sprinklers, lock your doors and windows using this app. But nothing much was done on the app to prevent misuse, thus can be a lot of fun if I can hack into one of my neighbor’s application

Alex drove us to the project site of ‘windmills of your mind’ where all the above crazy ideas were put into reality. The 16 storey buildings did not reflect the usual concrete jungle but sported a pleasant red elevation with the red bricks. This project will house a few hundreds of the prototypes described above and a line of villas. Entrance compound was a cloud of vertical grown crotons. The periphery of the project site was outlined with a line of the silver oak trees ensuring privacy and greenery. Bangalore still has a few lakes which don’t smell rot. One side of villa's area compound abuts the lake giving the beach resort look on the walk path. Rutu loved the independence of walking and tumbling on the lush lawns. The roof of villas were covered with lawns placed in wooden planter boxes which would help fight the global warming effects. The front side elevation was a curtain of flower creepers hanging down. We could not get into the nitty gritties inside as it was already late in the evening but still caught a glimpse of the swimming pools, rooms at lower level to ensure you are always close to upper living area, slot to hold your foot rugs in place

Having been an active part of building my home, I was able to visualize the amount of energy, commitment and inspiration that would be needed to clear all the functional blockers and at same time make it a visual treat. Alex did admit that their product was a value for money, but would never buy one, which explicates the different masks that our professional life forces us into, in order to earn our living.